Friday, September 22, 2006

Globalization

Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, recently visited Montevideo and wrote about it in the New York Times today (subscribers only section).

A tiny country of three million people, wedged between Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay has come from nowhere to partner with India’s biggest technology company, Tata Consultancy Services, to create in just four years one of the largest outsourcing operations in Latin America. Yes, when Tata’s Indian employees in Mumbai are asleep, its 650 Uruguayan engineers and programmers now pick up the work and help run the computers and backroom operations for the likes of American Express, Procter & Gamble and some major U.S. banks — all from Montevideo.How did this happen? One of the most interesting features of this era of globalization is how any entrepreneur — with the right imagination, Internet bandwidth and a small amount of capital — can assemble a global company by matching workers and customers from anywhere to do anything for anyone. Maybe the most important rule in today’s increasingly flat world is this: Whatever can be done, will be done — because so many people now have access to the tools of innovation and connectivity.

it is true that whatever can be done will be done. Unfortunately, Americans are going to become increasingly uncomfortable with this. I am one of those programmers who has been repeatedly outsourced. I've gone from $130 per hour down to as low as $40 per hour. I hope that Americans wise up and impose sanctions quickly before it is too late. Otherwise we are going to have no choice but to inflate our currency or risk a depression.

About Me

I teach economics at Kalamazoo College. My wife is also an economist. We were on sabbatical in Europe for the 2014-15 academic year. (Salamanca, Spain, followed by Oxford, UK.) We were in Uruguay for the 2006-7 academic year.